Holiday breakfast & the Polar Express!

For our class party, two of my room moms brought holiday shaped pancakes, syrup, eggs, sausage, bacon, and juice for breakfast! The students loved it! Following the breakfast, we watched the Polar Express to wrap up (no pun intended) our Holiday festivities!

Yummy breakfast fun!

We had a feast!

My room mom made these adorable polar express cupcakes!

Watching the Polar Express

We had a blast!

Enjoying some warm hot cocoa with our cupcakes!

too cute!!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, how lovely are your branches!

The last week before winter break, we read stories about pine trees, decorated our very own Christmas tree (an edible version), and did some math using ornaments for paper Christmas trees.

We used ice cream cones as the tree base and then added green frosting!

It was also spirit week at school, so today was hat day :)

We had tons of toppings for our trees!

Run, run, as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread man!

Week 2 of the holiday festivities was all about Gingerbread! The students had so much fun tasting gingerbread, decorating gingerbread cookies, and hearing various gingerbread stories!

First, we frost the gingerbread cookie.

Next, we decorate the cookie.

Last, we eat the gingerbread cookie!

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch

Our class had a lot of fun getting ready for the holiday season. Since there are so many activities to do during this time of year, I broke up my activities up into three areas over a time span of three weeks. The first week was about about the story, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Below you will see pictures from our week of the Grinch.

A parent made "grinch" cookies using green food coloring.

Making Grinch faces: To make the Grinch grin, I would....

Another parent made these adorable Grinch cupcakes!

Our Grinch bulletin board: the hearts had three ways the students can be kind to each other.

Thanksgiving Feast

During the month of November, our class learned about the First Thanksgiving. We discussed the way people lived a long time ago vs. how we live today using similarities and differences.
I have two wonderful room moms that made some yummy food for my class to try at our feast (i.e., turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes & gravy, corn, and bread). Below are the pictures from the day of our feast.

We made feathered hats

Feast Time!



Watching the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving at the end of the day



Election 2012

As a teacher, I try to keep my kiddos updated with current events so they know what is going on in our world. I always challenge my students to share what they have learned in class with their parents at home. Since it was election time, I grabbed some freebies from a collegue who has an amazing teaching blog, Katie Knight. She created some great election activities and I used some of them in my classroom. Below are some pictures from the day we "voted."

The top portion of the paper explained the election. The bottom portion is where the students check who they are voting for: Obama or Romney



Secret Ballot made by Katie Knight



Casting their vote

Our class bar graph

The final vote!



I made "I voted" stickers and gave each student a sticker after they voted...



Pumpkin Puppet Fun

So it's been a while...I have been slacking in the blogging area, but, I blame the holidays :) My husband and I hosted our Brazilian friends during my time off & we were busy visiting family & friends. As soon as I returned from Winter break in January, it has been non-stop at work (district assessments, grades, formal observation, and tracking off......sooooooon! Oh, and I am now 21 weeks pregnat!!).
I decided to post some pics from fall because they are just too cute to not post!
The pictures below are my students making a pumpkin puppet. We returned from our break the week of Halloween. The students were super energetic, grew during the month off (physically and academically), and of course were pumped for Halloween :)